Hospital chief expresses her fears for future in parting shot

Date Published: 17-Sep-2009

A disturbing picture of the health services in Galway has been painted by the retiring manager of University Hospital Galway – she predicts savage cutbacks allied to significant job losses.
Ward and theatre closures, waiting lists increasing by more than 2,000, the decimation of cancer services, the loss of 126 staff and a downgrading of the intensive care unit are among the shocking predictions.
In a written submission to the HSE chief, Bridget Howley, who has worked in the health services in Galway for the past 40 years, provides a grim assessment of how the cuts will impact.
The budgets for the two Galway hospitals have been cut by a staggering €22 million and already there is an €8 million overspend.
While the HSE concede that there is an overspend and that less money is available, the Executive insists that patients are still receiving the same level of care.
But Bridget Howley, who is due to retire as manager of UCH shortly, offered a very different perspective of how patients will be affected by the swinging cuts.
In the memo to Brendan Drumm, she says that the cuts will result in the closure of two wards – a total of 60 beds – while 70 beds had already been closed. This represents 17% of the total number of hospital beds.
But more controversially, she claimed that UHG would no longer be able to function as one of the eight designated cancer centres – the so-called centres of excellence.
Ms. Howley said that the cutbacks would result in reduced access to complex, specialist cancer surgery for the region. This means that patients requiring urgent surgery could experience crucial delays.
But Oliver McEnenna, Director of Cancer Services at UHG, said that it was a centre of specialisation as opposed to a centre of excellence and added that it provided the highest possible care for cancer patients.
He explained that ten years ago there were no radiotherapy services in Galway but over the past three years a “seamless” service had been provided.
“Prior to that patients travelled to Dublin usually at their own expense. It was undignified, it was wrong and it was unfair. Now we have almost 500 new breast cancer cases being treated in this country compared to 100, a decade ago”, Mr. McEnenna said.
He said that the staff in the cancer care unit were working hard to provide the best level of care for the patients.
“Either we get support from our political colleagues to improve the services we provide, if we don’t then the patients in the west of Ireland will have no choice but to go to Dublin for treatment”, he warned.
But Cllr. Padraic Conneely who is Chairman of the HSE West Regional Forum said that the bottom line of what Ms. Howley was saying was that patients would die.
“It is plain and simple that cuts will mean that cancer patients will not get the treatment they need when they need it. It deserves a public inquiry”, Cllr. Conneely said.